Survival Clause, стр. 73
“Well, something happened,” Grimaldi said, her lips tight and her hands white-knuckled on the wheel. “Maybe it was Mrs. Mullinax. Maybe the old lady’s picking up victims for her husband, and Yung went into the car because she thought it was safe. Or maybe it was Mullinax himself, and he shot her…”
“We would have heard the shot. And I’m not saying that nothing happened. Something did, or she would have been there, waiting for us. Something is keeping her from answering her phone.” Hopefully it was just unconsciousness or ropes, not death. “But beating yourself up over it doesn’t help. She’s a grown woman, and a federal agent. She can take care of herself. If something happened, it was her fault and not yours.”
I waited a second to see if she’d argue again. When she didn’t, I went on. “The best thing we can do right now is focus on finding her. And what we’re going to do once we have.”
Grimaldi nodded. “Well, we’re about five minutes from Daffodil Hill Farm. Once we get there, I figure we use the search warrant to go through every room in every building, and every vehicle in the place. If Mullinax isn’t there, we figure out where he is and what he’s driving, and we put out a BOLO on the vehicle.”
“What if he is there?”
“Then we make him tell us where he put her,” Grimaldi said. “Hopefully he hasn’t had time to kill her yet. He doesn’t keep the women long, but usually longer than just an hour.”
I nodded. “There’s the turnoff. See it?”
Grimaldi took it on two wheels, and we barreled down the track toward Daffodil Hill Farm.
Twenty
Rafe was there when we reached the parking lot, directing sheriff’s deputies to the left and right like he was born to it. When Grimaldi pulled up with a spatter of gravel, he arched a brow. “Problem?”
“Looking for Yung,” Grimaldi told him, assessing the property.
It had been a working farm at one point, so there were several outbuildings. A big barn sat at the far end of the property, closest to the trees, and looked mostly ready to come down. The three-bay garage looked like it had started life as a carriage house, same as at the mansion. The silver SUV was gone today, but the golf cart and darker gray sedan was still parked outside. And there was a brown and tan RV parked off to the side. A couple of crime scene techs were making their way toward it.
“That warrant doesn’t cover the house or outbuildings,” Grimaldi said, “does it?”
Rafe shook his head. “With what we had, this was all we could get. There’s gonna be no evidence of Jurgensson’s murder, so many years later, and there’s no evidence he took the women here before he killed them.”
“Yung’s missing,” Grimaldi said. “Would that make a difference?”
“Not less’n you have some reason to think she’s here.”
Grimaldi went over the reasons we thought she might be here, and Rafe nodded. “You can go talk to the judge. But with what I’ve got, all I can do is search the RV. All Bob can do is search the woods.”
“Damn.” She thought a moment. “Does Mullinax know that?”
“He has a copy of the warrant, so I imagine he does.” He glanced at her. “You know the rules. He gets a copy.”
She nodded. Rafe took her acquiescence as an excuse for greeting me with a quick kiss, and Carrie with a tickle. “Hi, pretty girl.”
She gurgled and kicked her feet, back in the car seat again. “I think she’s happy to be out of the sling,” I confessed. “She’s spent a lot of time being strapped to my chest so far today.”
“She’ll be all right.” He kept one eye on her and the other on the door to the RV, where the two crime scene techs had disappeared.
“I’m going to go talk to him,” Grimaldi declared. “Maybe he’ll let me look around if I ask nicely.”
If he had Leslie Yung stashed somewhere, I wouldn’t count on it, although if he knew we were looking for her, and knew we suspected him, maybe he’d think twice about killing her.
And on the plus side, he was here, not wherever she was. So that was one positive thing we could focus on.
“I guess I should go with her,” I told Rafe.
He nodded. “Leave the baby with me. If he does something crazy, I don’t want her over there.”
No argument here. I transferred the carrier from my hand to his, and jogged after Grimaldi.
I got there in time to hear her greet him, politely enough. “Mr. Mullinax.”
He nodded. “Chief Grimaldi. Is this your doing?”
“The sheriff’s. Although we’re working together.” She paused a second before added, “I’m hoping you will cooperate, too.”
Mullinax gave me a distracted look as I appeared behind Grimaldi. It didn’t seem to occur to him to ask what I was doing there. “I’m cooperating. Nothing else I can do when you’re waving a warrant in my face, is there?”
“We found bones in your woods,” Grimaldi said, point blank. “The sheriff and a couple of techs are back there retrieving them now.”
Mullinax hesitated for a second. “I imagine there are a lot of bones in the woods.”
“Not this kind,” Grimaldi said. “Or at least I hope you haven’t killed more than one person and left him out there.”
Mullinax stared at her.
“The warrant only covers the RV and the woods,” Grimaldi added, “but if you want to cooperate, maybe you’d give me permission for a quick look through the house and the other buildings, too?”
It took a second, and I could practically hear the gears moving inside Mullinax’s skull, but he must have come to the conclusion that he had nothing to lose. “I don’t suppose I should, without a warrant. But I have nothing to hide. Look all you want.”
“Thank you.” Grimaldi headed for the door. I scrambled to catch